State House Approves Plan To Fight Radon

May 06, 1986|by STEPHEN DRACHLER, The Morning Call

After western Pennsylvania legislators dropped a plan to block the bill, the House yesterday approved legislation that would establish an experimental program to find ways to lower radon levels in homes.

The legislation, which was sent to Gov. Dick Thornburgh for his signature, also sets up a legal mechanism that would allow the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency to begin issuing low-interest loans to homeowners who want to lower the radon levels in their dwellings.

Radon is an odorless, colorless, tasteless radioactive gas that is the byproduct of the natural decaying of uranium in the ground. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has said that exposure to radon gas is responsible for up to 20,000 lung cancer deaths in the United States each year.

The gas has been discovered in thousands of homes throughout the Reading Prong, a natural geologic formation that runs from Reading through the Lehigh Valley and into New Jersey and New York state.

Higher than recommended levels of radon have been found in nearly 6,200 of the nearly 11,000 homes that have been tested in the prong. The state Department of Environmental Resources has been testing homes in Berks, Lehigh, Northampton and Bucks counties since January 1985, when the high levels were first discovered near Boyertown.

Passed by a 195-0 vote yesterday, the bill authorizes DER to spend up to $1 million for the radon gas reduction and detection projects. DER would be able to award contracts to contractors and builders who would develop experimental or prototype systems for homes.

Sen. Michael O'Pake, D-Reading, who wrote the proposals, inserted into the bill by the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he's confident Thornburgh would sign the bill, because the governor supported the changes. The Senate passed the bill 48-0 on March 18.

Thornburgh proposed the $3 million, low-interest loan program last October, but the members of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency refused to proceed with the program until they had assurances they could not be held liable for radon remediation systems that did not work.

The legislation changes the technical status of the agency, as far as the radon loan program is concerned, to provide members of the board with immunity from lawsuits.

Yesterday's action came after O'Pake had voiced concern that a group of Pennsylvania House members might attempt to gut or re-amend the bill, in an effort to increase state funding to victims of floods and tornadoes last year.

Rep. Fred Taylor, D-Fayette, said he had hoped to put aid to the flood and tornado victims into the bill. Thornburgh last month, using his veto power, reduced the funding for the storm victims by more than half, from $15 million to $7.1 million. An attempt to override his veto failed in the house.

The bill the House passed yesterday was originally a proposal to provide grants for those storm victims. Residents in 25 counties were affected by the storms last May, September and November.

Taylor said the move was dropped after the Legislative Reference Bureau, which drafts legislation and provides advice to legislators, issued an opinion that the move would be unconstitutional. It would have been unconstitutional, Taylor said, because it would have mixed two substantive, but separate issues, in the same legislation.

O'Pake said he asked for the legal opinion last week, to try to head off any changes.